Casio Moon

The Space Lady is a Californian street musician who dons a retro-futuristic outfit, sets up a keyboard and plays  impromptu outdoor sets of stripped down psychedelic synth pop on the sidewalks of Berkeley. She’s kind of awful – cheap, tacky and fairly unimaginative – however I can’t really help but like it. Her songs are catchy without being cloying, cute without being overly twee and hey, everyone knows reverb vocals are like well cool and that. I don’t really care if there’s little or no range in what she does, or if a 5 year-old could have (and probably has) done it at home on the Yamaha 400 they got for their birthday, she just makes me smile. And sometimes that’s enough. Oh, and plus, she makes silly videos and wears a funny hat. Yeah.

On and On

There are some people who think that liking this type thang (sic) is done purely through irony and therefore deplore it as being another extension of meaningless postmodern borrowing harking back to a non-existent nostalgic past out of longing for any form or semblance of identity. My retort to such an accusation is thus: BORING.

I wish I was black and lived in Queens in the 80s and had disco balls for balls and it was acceptable to wear sequined spandex jumpsuits and multiple afro picks and high-tops and Kanye West hadn’t been invented yet and hip-hop was camp and my dad drove a taxi and knew everyone in the neighbourhood and we’d all get together and be like hey y’all and we’d eat home-cooked food and party in the street and never have to go to work and AIDS didn’t exist and it’d be great.

So yeah, maybe the fake nostalgia thing stands, and maybe I do struggle to feel like there’s a proper identity to 21st century western culture, but when shit’s this smooth I couldn’t care less.

Butter love in a hot tub yo. Daaaaang.

Catch more of him here: http://www.myspace.com/onra

Bafana Bafana

Verging on the brink of terrible but swayed on to the side of brilliance through itchingly infectious riddims and weird psyched-out vocals, it’s a kind of Dan-Deacon-Does-Afrobeat, played at 78 instead of 33 1/3, that your mum definitely won’t want to play at a dinner party. Almost certain winners of badmanest dancing 2010, I’m dying to hear some of this on a night out. Bukka.

If you rate there’s more to be found here:

http://boomkat.com/vinyl/315207-shangaan-electro-new-wave-dance-music-from-south-africa